Just a third of Americans can pass a multiple choice "U.S. Citizenship Test," fumbling over such simple questions as the cause of the Cold War or naming just one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.And of Americans 45 and younger, the passing rate is a tiny 19 percent, according to a survey done for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.Worse: The actual test only requires that 60 percent of the answers be correct. In the survey, just 36 percent passed.
Among the embarrassing errors uncovered in the survey of questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test and conducted by Lincoln Park Stragtegies:
- 72 percent of respondents either incorrectly identified or were unsure of which states were part of the 13 original states.
- 24 percent could correctly identify one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for, with 37 percent believing he invented the lightbulb.
- 12 percent incorrectly thought WWII General Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War.
- 2 percent said the Cold War was caused by climate change.
It gets worse:
According to the foundation analysis:
Only 13 percent of those surveyed knew when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, even on a multiple-choice exam similar to the citizenship exam, with most incorrectly thinking it occurred in 1776. More than half of respondents (60 percent) didn’t know which countries the United States fought in World War II. And despite the recent media spotlight on the U.S. Supreme Court, 57 percent of those surveyed did not know how many Justices actually serve on the nation’s highest court.
Huge numbers of post-Americans have no idea what is really important, so it's easy for them to fall for shiny objects like "social justice" and "economic equality."
Just perused a listing of the 50 most underrated colleges in America. A prominent metric was annual mid-career annual earnings which boosted the ranking of technical institutions. In your sad post-America what counts is what makes a buck enough to transcend the average and afford more stuff than the Joneses. This knowledge that you are bemoaning the lack of in America doesn't pad the AGI man!
ReplyDeleteReal education is different from vocational preparation (and, of course, from social-justice indoctrination.)
ReplyDeleteIf 95 percent of people can't get this stuff right, we're in deep trouble.
Unfortunately general knowledge is not that important because it doesn't appear to pay back in greenbacks.
ReplyDeleteAnd thus does the name of this blog continue to be an accurate depiction of our situation.
ReplyDeleteNothing lasts forever. There is a coming financial crash because is overvalued aka bullshit.
ReplyDeleteWrap your mind around this from an English Professor at PSU;
ReplyDelete"to my colleagues involved in Ph.D. programs, I say something simple and hard: Unless you are placing most of your students in the professorial jobs for which you are training them, you need to rethink what you are doing. We cannot go on allowing ourselves to accept students who believe that they will be the ones to make it, when we see so clearly that the job market is a matter not of individual talent but of structural violence, of a system whose primary ideological function is to absolve the individuals who participate in it from any moral responsibility for its effects."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-as-We-Know-Them/243769?key=xyToMThrnX-D5PRf98OLFHCAU3k6IlId-4aSPOm1FW2u44XE5GeNFN4wDKaeb6_sVHYtWlM4VXg3RGJtSVY1RzFvMGM4TXJ3ZUEzUk8tNTljZ2NILVlGbU5FTQ